I have to mention the best for FSX for the FUTURE!

[blockhead]

I have been using Flight Simulation since FS98 and recently since 2006, FSX. Though, I now use FSX-SE. I have always had third party software add ons for the simulator and I recently had to get a new computer due to a technical malfunction of my previous one. I don't know how many flight simmers are out there, have used Playsims Generation X, VFR Photographic scenery series of the UK? Every computer I have had, the program had installed perfectly -until I installed volume 3 north of England into my new machine, as the west part and north Wales has tiles missing, submerging half the land in water with its roads. The scenery has become squares where it had installed correctly. I don't understand what has gone wrong here. I even tried to rearrange the scenery in the scenery library of the simulator, to no avail. It's never happened before. It's strange. I've always thought that computers and the software ever made for them are incredibly strange creations of man. So now I wonder if FSX has any future as it appears that a small minority of developers who make add on scenery appear to disappear from the Flight simulation community. There's just no support out there anymore from these developers. To keep this hobby going, I think that it is high time that someone who has expertise literally remade Flight Simulators again from scratch, just like FSX but with a lot more realism gone into it. There has to be some experts out there who can remake Flight Simulation for the personal home pilot. There is that incredibly world famous Google Earth imagery transmitted from space and it is high time a new Flight simulator was made to have real world scenery etched into it...including 3d trees and buildings that has been spotted in some places in Google Earth recently other than Street view. This is where you can head down to ground view and see areas popped up in total 3d! Other than using third party -rubbish, I have to say. This is what causes a lot of problems in FSX and many times before in the past. There should be a one and only company who should remake FSX, with Google Earth imagery and 3d scenery as you come in low to the ground, BUILT IN the simulator itself. A company that can also have highly detailed, realistic airports all around the world as they really look like in real life. The technology is there, it's just waiting for the right people with the brains, power and money, to be nudged with this interest. Forget P3d and X plane...they are extremely DIFFICULT to master! I wish in a way that Microsoft didn't close those doors at the ACES studios. Third party software and a default Flight Simulator really don't mix!

[evm]

The license even for using only the Google Static Maps API commercially is already 10.000 € per year, with the amount of allowed downloads capped. A simulator like that would be very expensive for the end user.

 

IMHO only Google themselves could do it - and they did, too. There already is a Google flightsim, they just need to work on their aircaft and flight dynamics.

 

And there is the 3D view option in FlightRadar24 which gives you a good impression of what is possible today when streaming 3D geo data. An offline sim like we have now is impossible with that level of detail, we could never afford the required disk space.

[loki]

If Microsoft ever developed an interest in flight sims again, they have similar functionality in their Bing maps system to Google's 3D buildings they could use. Not sure I would trust Google to keep an interest in serious a flight sim if they ever went that far. Other than a a few core products, Google is pretty ruthless with cancelling projects that don't fit, and/or aren't worth their investment or they appear to simply lose interest in.

 

We can buy 10TB hard drives today, so storage won't always be an issue. Might have to sell the sim on blu-ray discs though. Would take most people several days to download everything.

[pandersonpc]

People are working on it.

[ftldave]

Scenery makers come and go, small businesses come and go, products come and go. Everything in this world has a life cycle, including software. Remember Sim Savvy which shipped scenery on preloaded hard drives? Gone now, but fondly remembered. Third-party vendors are often small, even one-person ventures, and some simply don't stay in business for a long period of time.

 

As for " it's just waiting for the right people with the brains, power and money", well, the business world isn't really that simple. Return on investment is the key factor, can enough money be made in profit to make the venture worth doing? Unfortunately, more money is to be made from mobile entertainment now, and maybe game consoles, than on pc-based games and simulators.

[kingnorris]

Scenery makers come and go, small businesses come and go, products come and go. Everything in this world has a life cycle, including software. Remember Sim Savvy which shipped scenery on preloaded hard drives? Gone now, but fondly remembered.

.

 

I still have Sim Savvy. The creator is now on the Megascenery Earth team, as an aside.